ouch! I stood on a plug once before, I can't even imagine how sore a rusty nail would be.
A happy new year to you dark, besides the hospital did you get much celebrating done?

Hello,
A happy new year to you both and the rest of the forumights reading this. @dark, glad to hear your brother's OK.
Last night we had a toger party which was really interesting, there were games such as javalin (which was actually javalin darts), boxing (on the wii which was hilarious), discus (with weird, retro sounding toy disc shooters!), and a hole bunch of random stuff all going on. Oh, and after the new year there was Karaoke, and I got to sing the Time Warp which was a lot of fun.

Hello,
@blindncool: wait, I think I've heard of that program. It was quite a while ago so I've... sort of forgotten what it was about.
Well, I'm starting the new year with a bit of an exciting bang, becoming a bit more productive.
I'm currently in the process of trimming down a four hour file into a more manageable chunk of audio, namely, my trip to Feel The Force Day last year. I literally recorded the entire day, from arrival to leaving, and when I say entire, I really do mean entire, even me eating my lunch. So I'm trimming the best bits down. Even that's going to have me end up with over an hour of material. So, what was going to be a highlights file is more like some sort of special, although it's still cool. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll see about posting a link somewhere, although I don't really know if that'll be in this topic, or a new one, or how this is going to work yet. I'll just say this though, quite possibly one of the best days of my life, ever.

@Aaron, Toger party? that sounds pretty crazy, especially with the time warp. I'm also sorry I didn't know about that "feel the force" convention before hand myself sinse it sounds awsome and I definitely could've got the train down there, (I even know a very nice holiday rental flat in eastborn sinse that is where my summer music school is).

Actually if you have the dates and location for next year it'd be good to know sinse then I could book some accommodation.

@Keyisful, your likely correct, though whether a person simply buying the latest this that and the other and doing whatever their corporate masters tell them is truly happy is another question. Unfortunately, huxley's brave new world is indeed beckoning at this point. I find it rather scary that when in 1953 Ray Bradberry predicted a society who burned books, not because they were dangerous, but simply because the powers that be determined that people were happier without thinking. In 2010 before his eath, Bradberry was asked whether he thought his book was still relevant and he responded by telling how on his way through the street he saw a woman so wrapped up in watching tv and listening to pop music on her Ipod she nearly walked infront of an oncoming car.

Well I had an interesting evening on saturday. I went to see the straus Orchestra. They obviously played a lot of Straus, but other things as well, however more than that they had huge amounts of fun! they had a soprano who was fantastic, singing several commic straus songs (in English), with both very good style and diction but a distinct sense of character, whether pretending to be drunk, or prtending to be in a music audition.
The conductor told a lot of jokes, and the orchestra did a lot of messing around, at one point they managed to convert the Roddetski march into We will survive, and the makarana.

The cleverest thing they did though, and one which people might appreciate is the conductor went on a rant about Windows, and had the orchestra replicate all the windows sounds. The startup and ending jingle, the dum dum, when you get mail, and the blerb of an error message. They then did an actual waltz incluing these, which was hilarious! particularly when in the middle the stage lights went own, the orchestra all played a blerb! and everything stopped as though the system had crashed before starting again a while later, and then finishing with the four note windows shutdown. It was musically very clever an quite hilarious, an the first time I've seen a small orchestra on stage replicate information technology.

Well, as for myself there are a few things on the agenda for this month.

The first is I have decided to think more positively. I'm tired of feeling sad, lonely, upset, and just angry after my divorce so I've elected to change my attitude. To think happy thoughts, to try and think more positive, and so far that seems to be working as intended.

I have started scheduling my time, and one of the things I am doing is I'm getting back into game programming. After a couple of years of on and off development I am actually beginning to work on games and other projects with a bit more regularity, and hopefully will have something to show this year for my efforts.

On the 15th of the month I will of course have my birthday. I don't know what if anything my family and I will do for my birthday, but I'm actually looking forward to it. I don't expect anything spectacular, probably just a simple gathering, go out to dinner, but that will suit me just fine.

Beyond that I can't think of anything special for this month. January  usually is a slow month for me. Pretty much the same thing different day most of the time. So I'll add more details or things as they happen.

@Aaron, Peterborough is great, being that my parents live in Nottingham and from Newark station it's less than an hour, I wouldn't even need accommodation the way I would in Eastborn. If you could e-mail me the address and any links to further info such as where to buy tickits etc that would be helpful, the adress as always is dark at x g a m dot org. Knowing this far in advance I might even see about a costume of some sort, maybe Reever and I could go as the fourth octor and K9  .

@Tom, positive thinking is good in principle but less easy in practice, good luck.

I am however glad to here your starting up programming and look forward to the results of that as and when they are ready in some capacity.

@Hacker, Glad to hear you've got some work done, but I'm afraid I have no idea what this arch thing is, is it some sort of installer for the linux opperating system?

As for me, to be honest things have not been fun owing to my mum being in hospital for fairly nasty surgery, things worked out but not partiuclarly easily, so right now I'm just enjoying peace and quiet and the chance to play swamp, drink coffee and read some interesting books, ---- right now I'm reading the first Partials book by Dan Wells which I borrowed from a friend of mine, ---- sort of post appocalyptic after most of humanity gets wiped out in a war with some created super soldiers.

Stylistically it seems not good, and right now I'm sort of waiting for the plot to get in gear and to learn more about the world, but hay I'll always give fun stuff a try. Also sinse one friend was the gm of our recently finished Mutants and Masterminds tabletop game, and used the partials scenario as part of the plot it's going to be interesting to see where he got the ideas from.

I will also be starting buffy season 2 this week, hurrah! I can't wait to see James Marsters as a bad guy, he was so awsome as Captain John Heart in Torchwood, and he makes a great reader of audio I also have had friends who say he was the best character in the series.

So, ironically when everyone else is getting in gear after christmas, I'm looking for time off, but why not! .

@Aaron what song is that? As you know I've done a fare amount of on stage type stuff and would do more if directors weren't such scumbags, though I generally hold myself to be a singer who can vaguely act rather than an actor who can sing.

Partials is finally picking up and proving interesting. The series name is just "partials" I think because the genetically created super soldiers are part human or similar. It's got an interesting premise in that there is a virus which kills babies hours after they're born so no new children have been born for 11 years, the humans believed the partials released this but I'm not sure. Unfortunately though my friend didn't have the best time sinse she read the book while she was pregnant which probably was a bad coincidence, ---- sort of like my unfortunate reading of assassin's apprentice when I was going through some rather hard guide dog training with Reever .

When I've finished partials I have something very awsome to start, Firefight by brandon sanderson, and of course I've still got my huge run of Doctor who audios to continue as well.

@dark hope your mom feels better soon... This is an installer for the arch linux distro. arch does not have an automatic installer and setting up an arch install was quite a pain in the butt gun for me when I did it, so over the past few months I put this together. It does have accessibility built in, orca, chromevox, eviacam for head tracking with a webcam and espeakup console screen reader with output to espeakup, and freespeech dictation. The downside is that it does take quite a while to install, several hours to be exact and it does set your time zone to new york by default, although you can change that later. If you're interested, here's the readme:
Arch Autobuild Live Environment
Contents
++disclaimer
++intro
++requirements
++How to use
++What this installs:
++What this will do
++FAQS
++disclaimer
    Arch Autobuild Live Environment
    Copyright (C) 2014  Daniel Nash

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
    with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
    51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

    I can be contacted by email at [email protected]

++intro
This is a modified live arch linux distribution with an easy to use text-based installation process
***IMPORTANT NOTE*** THIS WILL DESTROY ALL DATA ON YOUR FIRST HARD DISK! BACK UP ALL OF YOUR DATA BEFORE YOU TYPE AUTOBUILD!!!
By first disk, I am refering to the disk that linux believes is sda, so  unplug all other disks than the target disk during the installation process (I know I sound like apple, but I'm just making sure I don't get mobbed by a bunch of people who didn't read this file and are wondering why they accidently blew away the wrong disk).  If you are planning to dule boot, your best bet is to use VirtualBox, because due to time constraints in developing this thing, I did not have the time to put in a function to ask you how much space you want to give linux, so it will use your whole disk.
++requirements
Any computer with an i386 or x86_64 archetecture (You'll be surprised what this thing runs on, even a p2 with 128 megs of ram)
dvd drive or flash stick for installation
wired or wireless network card to download installation packages over the net
make sure your system is connected to AC power during the install
anywhere from 2 to 8 hours(your best bet is to run this, go to lunch when it gets to the installation step, then come back to do the post install steps)
An external drive with a larger capacity than your hard disk if you are going to back up your system with clonezilla
++How to use
To automatically build your system, follow these simple instructions:
1: BACK UP ALL DATA!!!!! before starting this install since it will destroy all information on the first hard disk that it sees (sda) **THIS THING SHOWS NO MERCY!**
Note: if you need assistance with backing up your data, use clonezilla, a free backup solution included on both installation images. To run, at the root prompt, type clonezilla, select device image, then follow the displayed or spoken prompts (If using the talking image and you are only hearing ok cancel, press the * key on the numpad until you hear highlight tracking and try to move in the lists again)
2: After you finish with your backups and burning the iso, boot from the newly created dvd by placing it in your drive and restarting your computer. While you see your manufacturer's logo (hp, sony, dell, etc), continue pressing the boot menu key (f12 for most manufacturers, f9 for hp's, and select cd rom, ide1, cd/dvd-rom, or something similar from the menu.
3: After reading the readme file, when you get the root prompt which should look like "[root@archiso~#}", just type autobuild
4: watch it fly. you will be asked a few questions during the setup process such as encryption key (your password that you will type each time you turn on your computer to protect your files, and after the installation completes, the username, passwords, etc. Simply follow the instructions displayed on your screen or spoken by espeakup if using the talking installer to complete the install.
++What this installs:
This script installs a variety of software, almost too much to count. Here is a brief selection:
gnome, kde, lxde, xfce, cinnamon, mate, and enlightenment desktops including all accompanying software collections
thunderbird email client
libreOffice productivity suite(writer, impress, calc, base and draw (the linux equivilent of ms office, for free, including a word processer, presentation program, spreadsheet program, drawing program, and a database solution))
firefox web browser
chromium web browser
google chrome web browser
pandora internet radio client
fortuner desktop fortune cookies
youtube-dl video downloader used in command line (find a video you want to download on youtube in your browser of choice, coppy the address by right clicking the video link and selecting the coppy link address, coppy link location or something similar option in your browser, open the terminal application through the desktop search box or the menus, type youtube-dl paste the link, and watch is fly)
gparted partitioner
ntfs-3g read and write ntfs volumes
VirtualBox virtualization tool, allowing you to run virtual machines to run other opperating systems, giving each one it's own disk space, memory, etc...(this is the best way to multiboot, but it will eat your ram like a thirsty camel after a 200 mile long journey accross the gobi desert)
wine: run windows programs on your linux system
emacs (the opperating system disguised as a text editor
multimedia (mp3) support
banshee media player (iTunes for linux), oh I mean an actual media player and not an ad machine
tesseract ocr system with ocrfeeder and gimagereader graphical frontends
retroarch emulation system, ever wanted a desktop arcade? this app will give you just that, it emulates many retro systems, from the ancient pong consoles to the playstation 1 (roms not included, try coolrom.com or similar, look up mame rom files or (system name) roms on google)
audacious music player (winamp clone)
audacity audio editor
vlc media player
simple ocr program that reads the text from the scanned image aloud, open a terminal, type ocr, hit enter, and assuming that your scanner is sane-compatible (most are these days), just sit back and listen, just make sure the sheet isn't upside-down, otherwise, you'll be asking what the french fries is this nonsense?
A load of other software, 23 gigs of goodies, take your pick
++What this will do
1: connect you to the internet with wifi
2: partition your disk, if you see "partitioning your disk", you're done, remember I said back up your data?
3: format and mount the boot volume that will hold the kernel and grub config
4: set up disk encryption (this is required, because everytime I tryed without disk encryption, grub came back and gave me a nice out of memory error and would leave me staring at a grub boot prompt, and besides, it's a barrier to theives ("Give me your computer!", you shut it down, and sure, take it!) they'll be spending days just guessing your disk encryption key, and later, thanks to ecryptfs home folder encryption, your login password
5: format your newly encrypted root as ext4
6: make a fstab (temp copy)
7: install software (this will take a long time to download upwards of 4 gigs of packages over your network connection (Don't try this on your carriers network unless you have unlimited data, otherwise, oink oink, your data bill raises the roof )
8: copy your temp fstab to your new root
9: copy your grub.cfg file that will auto-boot the system
10: run a post install script that will install software not included in the default repos, like google chrome, pithos, fbcmd (use facebook from the command line), retroarch, etc..., enable services like printer support, bluetooth, the gnome display manager, etc..., set a root (system god) password and make an account for you to use and set up your password and finally setup home encryption, protecting your files, even if a thief takes out your drive
++FAQS
Q: Why is my hp system refusing to boot?
a: This has happened to me several times, the sollution is to immediately press the esc key after powering up, before you see the hp logo and press enter at the startup menu, it appears to be a bug with the hp firmware, where it trys to execute the fake mbr code in the gpt too early and doesn't give control to grub and later, the linux kernel, this seems to be due to a setting in the bios which I haven't been able to pin down as of yet, just hit esc while powering up and then enter.
Q: When I start up, I don't see a desktop or a login manager, I just see this thing saying to enter my passphrase to unlock dev sda, what does this mean?
A: Remember the encryption key that you typed in during the install? That's your passphrase, you have to type this in every time you reboot your computer.
Q: Where's word, excel, powerpoint, outlook...
A: Word, excel and powerpoint are the libreoffice suite, writer, calc, and impress, also, as part of this suite, you also get base, a database program, draw, a drawing program, and math, a formula editor. The linux equivilant of outlook is evolution, part of the gnome desktop environment.
Q: Is this legal? the cops won't get me for using this system, will they?
A: No way in hades's gymsocks! Since this is all free software, meaning free as in the right to study, make changes to, and free to distribute, there is nothing illegal about either me distributing or you using any of this software, when I use terms like word, outlook, excel, etc, you do not get microsoft products, you get free , better, and compatible alternatives to those products.
and btw, the partials sounds rather interesting, I'll check it out when I get a chance. Hope everyone's doing well...

Just thought I'd drop in my two scents. Life is pretty much boring as usual -- idle on several muds, complain about my boredom, read books, finish books, complain about boredom... etc.

Speaking of books, I finished Firefight a while ago, and although it was nice, I didn't feel it was usual Brandon Sanderson quality; I know Brandon Sanderson as an author who does not resort to conventionality or cliches, but Firefight was full of these, not to mention somewhat slow on the uptake. There were a couple weird inconsistancies, but it does advance the plot along quite nicely. I hope you enjoy it, Dark, and anyone else with plans of reading the series (it doesn't start with Firefight, the first book is Steelheart).

On a somewhat related note, isn't a new dresdin book being released this year? And does anyone know what's become of the Kerkerkruip project?

@Wanderer, yes, I got the idea your story was more intended as surreal fun than anything serious, very craaaaaaaazy! in all senses.
The boundary of what is and isn't fantasy is an interesting one, for example I would've called the Running Man dystopean sf, and several of king's others horror that boarders on fantasy, indeed the site I review for fantasticfiction.co.uk covers everything from space going sf, to alternative history, urban magic in a modern day setting, appocalyptic, zombie fiction, horror  and of course full on swords and sorcery which seems fare enough.

Personally I'll read any sort of speculative fiction from horror to surreal, and judge them pretty much the same way based on characters, plot and originality. I'll even read the odd pure historical though not that often, and only from authors I know to be good, (I really enjoyed Bernard Cornwell's King Arthur series), I just find books about today that focus on crime or suspense elements and don't have anything unusual in them not that interesting, paticularly sinse many, especially the crime and thriller ones often come with something of a political bias as well that interferes with characters and plot. You do in fareness sometimes get this in fantasy literature too (Terry goodkind anyone?), but in a good author it's less common sinse people usually want to explore another world or set of unusual circumstances rather than impose their views.

I'm actually at the moment just finishing Ian M Banks sf story Player of games, which I've really enjoyed, actually quite a lot more than his first culture book, which seemed to ramble on and get a little pointless in places. Very pphilosophical sf about a semi utopian, anarchystic, mechanistic society called the Culture, and of course this one I particularly liked sinse it's all about The Culture's interaction with an extremely cruel empire where political and social standing is determined by how well people do in a stratogy game .

Well I did eat a squirrel last night. Interesting flavour, a little like a farely tough chicken thigh and a little like liver, also I had to literally pick it up and do a Barbarian sinse it was very much stuck on the bones, though very amusing in that I literally got the hole! Squirrel, (you could even see the claws).

I think if I had one again I'd prefer it prepared differently, sinse roasted it was still a tad on the tough side, and the taste was pretty strong. not unpleasant, but it'd need to be served the right way to be effective, I'd be interested to have one barbecued or maybe stewed, but probably not roasted again, although it did come with some very nice vegitables with time sauce and a good heap of mash.

The same place also does ostridge, and frog's legs, which I'll also have to try at some point. I've already had their Zebra meetballs, which were rather nice, although not as nice as the occasion a friend of mine got some frozen zebra in a meet hamper and cooked it properly.

Well hay, it beats living off mcdonalds, for one thing it involvves actual, honest to goodness meet, (a fact I doubt with respect to Mcdonalds, at least in the Uk).